I had never heard of Kallaripayyat before but if I remember my history didn't India get invaded and made part of the British Empire and I've never heard of one recorded instance of Indian fighters using some unknown martial art against British soldiers. The only thing that beat our 'Western thuggery' skills was non violent protest.

If it's ancient it isn't relevant to modern laws on reasonable force in violent confrontations either. Plus those clips looked a bit like this http://www.dancecombat.com/

Why take Capoeira for getting in shape but pretending it's got something to do with fighting ? All that will do is use up valuable free time and blunt your senses to the reality of martial arts and fighting. If you want the same workout breakdance there's no conflict in your mind because you're not LARPing combat and unlike Capoeira where I think they're scared of lava and glass bottles you can roll on the floor giving you a lot more moves you can do. The music is a lot better than bongo drums and I find Bhangra music is good to break to.

I had never heard of Kallaripayyat before but if I remember my history didn't India get invaded and made part of the British Empire and I've never heard of one recorded instance of Indian fighters using some unknown martial art against British soldiers. The only thing that beat our 'Western thuggery' skills was non violent protest.

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No most probably Kallaripayyat was not used anytime against the british .The british soldiers never used boxing against the Indians either.
There were two groups of indian freedom fighter the non violent ones and the armed freedom fighters.Contrary to the propaganda of India winning its freedom only by non violent means armed struggle was the main reason for the british to leave india.
The people who were in armed struggle often trained in knife ,stick and unarmed combat(even boxing).For example freedom fighters in west bengal would operate under the disguise of fitness club "Anushilan Samiti".
The freedom fighters most probably never used martial art against british soldiers they used guns mostly mauser .
The british soldiers had difficulty dealing with the stick fighters or "lathial".
Also Gama is well known of that period beside other great Indian wrestlers who competed against british and western wrestlers.

Then you are mistaken. Healing and MA were always seen as mutually exclusive. ART as it refers to MARTIAL ARTS simply means SKILL.

But the ability to efficiently destroy the human body (and protect your own) is intrinsically related to knowledge of how its SUPPOSED to work. It may not have been common for most individuals to necessarily study both directly, but in some instances at least they still draw from the same body of knowledge, and were practiced together at higher levels. The Amatsu Tatara comes to mind, which includes healing skills closely related to its combat techniques. Granted, the Amatsu Tatara covers a lot of stuff, and most examples I can think of are more like battlefield first-aid than full fledged medicine "arts."

Regarding martial "art," I think a problem comes with whacky concepts of what "art" means... and I mean in the the "artistic" sense. As if making art has something to do with making something complex, flowery, and good looking. When Asia refers to "art" as in artisan, e.g. a well-developed skillset... well... absolutely. Thing is, that isn't all that different from what it means in the context of "fine art." More like developing skill to the point of transcending the idea of skill or technique. Art doesn't have to be beautiful.... though even that is a faulty sentence, because (beauty != pretty).

There's this fucked up idea that a beautiful/artful fighting system is something that "looks pretty" or something like that, and you end up with these martial arts versions of Thomas Kinkaid, and there's nothing artful about that.

I had never heard of Kallaripayyat before but if I remember my history didn't India get invaded and made part of the British Empire and I've never heard of one recorded instance of Indian fighters using some unknown martial art against British soldiers. The only thing that beat our 'Western thuggery' skills was non violent protest.

If it's ancient it isn't relevant to modern laws on reasonable force in violent confrontations either. Plus those clips looked a bit like this http://www.dancecombat.com/

Why take Capoeira for getting in shape but pretending it's got something to do with fighting ? All that will do is use up valuable free time and blunt your senses to the reality of martial arts and fighting. If you want the same workout breakdance there's no conflict in your mind because you're not LARPing combat and unlike Capoeira where I think they're scared of lava and glass bottles you can roll on the floor giving you a lot more moves you can do. The music is a lot better than bongo drums and I find Bhangra music is good to break to.

I'll print this useless post out and laminate it. Every time I've got a minute to waste, I'll take it out of my wallet and read it.